Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is no other name under Heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved, Acts 4:12.
My wife and I hope that our Blog may be used as a tool to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ. We desire to minister His message of salvation to anyone who is willing to hear us. We believe His free gift of salvation is available to all, and we invite whosoever will to come and take freely of the water of life, Revelation 22:17.

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Sin or Sins: Is There a Difference? Part 2

Whereas the high priest entered the Holiest of All with
the blood of bulls and goats once per year, Jesus entered “not with the blood of goats and
calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all,
having obtained eternal redemption,” Hebrews 9:12. The sacrifice Jesus
made on our behalf goes well beyond merely “atoning” in the Old Testament sense
of animal sacrifice.

His blood did not cover us, that is blot out our sins from
God’s sight for a time. Instead He has “washed us from our sins in His own blood,”
Revelation 1:5. Consider the language employed. Jesus entered Heaven, coming
before the throne of the Father once for all, Hebrews 9:24. In other words,
this sacrifice of Himself for sin will NEVER be repeated. Having done this for
us, He obtained eternal redemption. Eternal means never ending; something that
cannot have an end by very definition. Redemption in Hebrews 9:12 is the Greek
word “lutrosis” and means “deliverance.” In other words, our Lord won for us
eternal (never ending) deliverance. What does it mean to be delivered? It is
the removal from one state into another; generally speaking in terms of going
from a bad situation to a better one. Since this proffered deliverance is
eternal, the entering in of a new state for the believer is one that never
ends. We have received eternal deliverance.

Back to the question at hand: did Christ die for our
sins, or for sin? If Jesus died to put away sin it is not illogical or
unbiblical to likewise say He died for our sins. It takes it from the universal
to the intimately personal. He died for my sins! Jesus my Lord suffered the
judgment of God for sin on my behalf, and died for my sins. But not mine alone.
No, we read “but now, at the end of the ages, He has appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of Himself,” Hebrews 9:26. Again, we go from this sweeping,
amazing statement to the deeply personal when we read of Jesus: “you
know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin,”
1st John 3:5. The message of the gospel addresses the needs of the individual
regarding salvation when we read: “Christ died for our sins, according to the
Scriptures,” 1st Corinthians 15:3. This intimate message is good news
to the sinner, the sum total of their sins being paid for on the cross by their
Lord and Savior.

Paul writes: “For the death [Jesus] died, He died to sin
once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. Likewise you also,
reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus
our Lord,” Romans 6:10-11. Sins are the manifestation of our natural
spiritual state of death. Sin is the cause, and sins are the symptoms of the
illness. Jesus died to bring the remedy, and that remedy was applied to all
people the world over for all time, which is why Paul could later write, “we
trust in the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of those who
believe,” 1st Timothy 4:10. Peter, speaking about unregenerate false
teachers says they shall deny “the Lord who bought them, and bring on
themselves swift destruction,” 2nd Peter 2:1. The eternal redemption
Christ received upon entering the Holy of Holies applies to all people on earth;
the difference, as Paul points out, is that some through faith receive this
free gift, while others spurn it and continue abiding in God’s wrath.

Jesus our Lord said the same regarding the saved and the
unsaved. “He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is
condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten
Son of God,” John 3:18. “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears
My word and believes in Him who sent Me has (present tense) everlasting life,
and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life,”
John 5:24. The issue then doesn’t seem to be whether or not one is a sinner,
but what we believe concerning Jesus that saves or condemns.

John, one of the apostles, writes much the same: “He
who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son does not have life.
These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God,
that you may know that you have eternal life (present tense), and that you may
continue to believe in the name of the Son of God,” 1st John 5:12-13.